Harry Reid's Personal Prosecutor

A paper mill may pay $5.3 million for breaking a rule that didn't exist.

June 22, 2014 6:48 p.m. ET

The trail of evidence from most political crime scenes eventually traces back to Harry Reid's Capitol chambers these days, as the Majority Leader and the White House plot to keep the Senate. But an energy nomination fight seems to be producing more innocent casualties than usual.

Mr. Reid and President Obama have weaponized the formerly obscure Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in the name of their anticarbon agenda, and their nominee to lead FERC is prosecutor Norman Bay. Mr. Bay cleared the Senate Energy Committee...